


tired

by fadewords



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Autistic Mick Rory, Gen, again i capitalize nothing & i'd apologize but i'm not actually that sorry, writing is jus Easier when u don't bother capitalizing thos pesky letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 03:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14632908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadewords/pseuds/fadewords
Summary: mick paid it no mind. all day, no mind. the flat feeling when he woke up, the slightly stretched one when he stood, the lingering awareness of his temples--barely registered. they were nothing.and when they became something, somewhere around lunch--when they turned to a pressure and stretching he had to actively ignore, well--so what. still nothing. he drank a glass of water and called it good.until the library. until reading. until standing up, finally, chapter finished, and a couple goblins smashing his skull with a sledgehammer.





	tired

mick paid it no mind. all day, no mind. the flat feeling when he woke up, the slightly stretched one when he stood, the lingering awareness of his temples—barely registered. they were nothing.

and when they became something, somewhere around lunch—when they turned to a pressure and stretching he had to actively ignore, well—so what. still nothing. he drank a glass of water and called it good.

until the library. until reading. until standing up, finally, chapter finished, and a couple goblins smashing his skull with a sledgehammer.

he froze in place until they stopped. then headed for the door—and the goblins got to smashing again. he ignored them, kept walking—slammed right into nate.

“watch it,” he snapped.

“you watch it,” pretty said good-naturedly, bending to pick up the books he’d dropped.

mick ignored him, sidestepped, left the library.

was headed for his room when the intercom went off—everyone to the bridge, there was another abberation.

he stalked the rest of the way to his room, grabbed his gun, took an aspirin—no matter how often the team said it, he _wasn’t_ an idiot—he knew better than to go out compromised without taking precautions—headed to the bridge, where everyone’d already gathered.

“took you so long?” captain asked.

he held up his gun.

“right. well, we’ve got an abberation round a van gogh—the man himself, not a painting. let’s go.”

and they went, everyone spilling out the waverider in a crowded, thonking muddle. mick took up the rear, watchful.

van gogh, huh? mick’d stolen a van gogh once. not from a museum—not worth the hassle. from someone who’d already stolen it from one. it’d had sunflowers, and he and snart had admired it briefly, quietly, before they’d turned around and sold it—snart more than him.

he’d thought it was all right. fun to stare at with unfocused eyes, but not as great as the briefcase full of cash they’d get for it. but snart—snart had traced the frame’s edge with his fingertips and looked at it for a moment quietly, contemplatively, the way he sometimes did new security systems.

and then the moment had passed, and snart had grinned, and they’d sold the thing and bought—

mick pushed the memory out of mind. not the time, not the place. he had a job to do.

van gogh, as it turned out, was not a very hard man to find. a little digging turned him up in a shop he had no business being in, sketching on the edge of a book that mick found himself possessed of the abrupt urge to steal.

so he did, when ray was busy talking van gogh’s ear off. slipped it in his pocket without glancing at either drawing or title. that’d come later. for now—getting the guy home ungutted.

—which, abruptly, meant fighting goons.

so mick fought goons. found himself suddenly acutely grateful he’d taken the aspirin—his head might feel thick and heavy, but it didn’t hurt every time he whirled around to blast someone, or got shoved, or stared into the flames.

 _see, mick_ , said the snart in his head—completely different from the snart he’d asked the professor’s help with, and he could be sure because it didn’t come with a visual, and it’d been there even when snart’d been alive— _it pays to take precautions_.

 _shut up_ , he told it, and clobbered one of the goons in the face, narrowly avoiding getting clobbered himself.

a few more goons, a few knocks to the chest, and a whole lot of fire later, they were all running for the waverider, escaping—and then escaped. safe.

as they settled back in the temporal zone, mick realized he’d never gotten the chance to ask vince about the flowers—or the other thing. ear thing. sound. tinnitus—that.

( _you know_ , snart had said once, after learning about the tinny, high-pitched _scree_ mick’s ears always made and telling mick that no, actually, that wasn’t normal, and silence _didn’t_ sound like ringing. _they say van gogh had tinnitus._ )

mick’d wondered how he’d got it—blow to the head? gunshot? other loud sound? illness? or had he just always been like that—like mick?

now, he supposed, he’d never know. he could probably look it up if he really wanted, course. but what would be the point?

so he let the thought drip away and crashed in a chair in the kitchen with a plate of food he wasn’t remotely hungry for, because it was dinner time and they’d got in a fight, and that meant eating, hungry or not.

as he did, the pressure settled back around his temples, slowly, like a headband shrinking in the wash, if his head were also in the wash, and the headband were also around it.

he was, he was sure, in for a reunion with the goblins if he stood up too quickly, so he’d have to be slow about it. go back to his room. fuckin sleep.

instead, he pulled the little book out of his pocket. turned it over, squinted to read the little gold title—select poems of walt whitman.

whitman. wordy bastard.

still—as long as he had it…

mick opened the book. leafed through, not bothering to read properly, just scanning, searching for—there.

a little flower, lightly sketched, and a coffee cup, little trails of steam rising from the top. he ran a thumb over them both, pleased when the ink didn’t smear, when the paper slid smooth and soft under his skin.

“whatcha got there?”

haircut.

“souvenir,” mick said, and closed the book.

“can i see?” ray reached for it.

“n…” he let the _no_ on the tip of his tongue trail off to a grunt. if he refused, ray’d only get more curious, and then it’d be a whole thing. “knock yourself out.” mick threw the book at him and stood. braced himself on the edge of the table—yeah, there were the goblins. little bastards.

“whitman, huh? never pegged you for a fan. you got a favorite?” without waiting for an answer, ray continued, “mine’s always been ‘when i heard at—’”

mick pushed away from the table, stomped to his room. halfway there gave up stomping. echoed too much in the tin-can hallways, like a fork dropped on tile at three in the morning, and twice as painful. which was saying something, as mick felt forks dropped on tile at three in the morning ought to be outlawed, and in some circumstances designated a form of torture.

snart had laughed when he’d said so, and mick had made snap decision never to mention it again. it was only several months later, when he’d dropped a fork himself in the scrappy kitchen they shared, and seen snart’s face go flat and his hand grip the counter tight, that he’d realized that snart hadn’t actually disagreed. and hadn’t dropped a fork himself even once since mick’d said the thing—where before he’d dropped them near-constantly. which'd prompted mick to say it in the first place.

they’d never discussed it, but mick had been careful to keep his own butterfingers in check from then on.

he shoved the memory away. kept walking to his room, softer, fingers tapping a familiar rhythm on the side of his leg.

got to his room. fed axel, slowly, carefully. tried not to move his head too much. mostly failed.

laid down on top of the covers, not bothering to change clothes. closed his eyes. tried to sleep.

slept. briefly, fitfully.

woke too soon, head pounding twice as loud as before. tried to go back to sleep. failed. lay there in silence instead, staring unblinking at the ceiling, then the backs of his own eyelids, then the underside of the pillow jammed to his face, which was not nearly heavy enough, but three times scratchier than it needed to be. he’d have to get gideon to make a case for it. something soft. hell, maybe silk. she could make anything, couldn’t she? why not.

he pushed the pillow away. brought it back a second later, growling.

“gideon,” he said.

“yes, mr. rory?”

“kill the lights.” there weren’t, strictly speaking, any on in the room. but the little red-and-green ones that flashed in the gaps in the walls, and shone from the ceiling—those.

“of course.”

he grunted in thanks, and shoved the pillow away again to find that the little lights had indeed been switched off. the room was, at last, completely dark.

he sighed. closed his eyes again—not because he was tired, though he was, but because they felt better closed. shifted, trying to get comfortable, and scowled. he’d barely moved, but you’d think he’d dropped a boulder in the middle of a pond, the waves of pain it sent radiating through his skull.

stupid.

he debated taking more meds, but decided against it. one hadn’t helped for very long, why should another make much difference? and besides, the last thing he needed was to build up a tolerance, in his line of work. on the waverider and off.

best to ride it out.

 _don’t be stupid, mick_. unbidden, a fuzzy image sprang into mick’s head—snart, one eyebrow raised, holding out two tylenol, the way he had all those years ago.

mick’d refused, of course. and snart’d given him an ultimatum. take them, or sit the job out.

so naturally he’d pretended to take them and gone anyway, driving white-knuckled and holding his breath to keep from coughing—and got clocked in the head before he could step out the car. woken to find himself back home, snart sitting across the room, dangling a pretty necklace in front of his eyes.

 _morning sleeping beauty_ , he’d drawled, without looking away from it.

mick’d wanted to snap back that it wasn’t morning, he was no one’s princess, and snart’d had no right to knock him out like that—opened his mouth unsure which was going to come out first, and found that none did. he’d lost his voice.

 _pity_ , snart’d said, sounding far too smug for his own good. and he’d reached onto the table, picked up a cup, rattled it—pills inside—and held it out. _heist’s over. take them_.

mick hadn’t. it’d been the principle of the thing—snart wasn’t his goddamn dad. he couldn’t be ordered around like that. wouldn’t. and it wasn’t like he hadn’t made it through worse shit without meds. what did it fuckin matter.

snart’d shrugged, set the cup down. _on your own head_.

mick’d rolled his eyes—immediately regretted it because it _hurt_ —and then spent four solid days shivering under a pile of blankets. unpleasant, but not the worst time he’d had. and worth it, cause he didn’t have to see that smug look in snart’s eyes.

the next time he’d found himself sick before a heist with snart giving him that stupid smarmy look, though, he’d glared, but taken the proffered bottle and dry-swallowed the meds and headed out the door.

mick scrubbed his forehead with a fist, pushed the memory away. what did it matter. they’d already done the job. nothing left to jeopardize.

 _don’t be stupid, mick_.

he scrubbed his forehead harder. reached out blindly, grabbed the little white bottle, and struggled with the child lock for a long, frustrating minute before chucking the thing at the wall. stupid.

stupid, stupid.

he thumped the mattress with his fist, then his own leg, and then bit down hard on his hand to keep from thwacking at his own skull. wouldn’t help anything—at least, not for very long.

then, slowly, painstakingly, he sat up. gritted his teeth. stood. got up, walked across the room, nearly tripping over the jumble of papers and plates and clothes on the floor, and crouched down, searching for the bottle.

was in here somewhere. where, where—there.

he grabbed the bottle, went back to bed. fumbled with the lock again. got it open, finally. shook out two pills. was about to toss them back and screw the stupid cap back on when a knock at the door startled him into dropping the lot.

he flinched twice as hard at the resulting clatter as he had at the knock. pressed his palms to his eyes til he saw stars. pressed harder when the knock sounded again.

“mick?”

haircut.

he pressed even harder. then put his arms back down by his sides, eyes still closed. “what?”

was there a mission? he could do a mission. probably. if he grabbed some of the pills off the floor, had some water, a few minutes to prepare, a gun to grip. yeah, he could do that. easy.

“i’ve got your book.”

……oh.

mick fell back against the pillows, scowling, trying to think through the latest spike. “whatever. keep it.”

“but it’s yours?” ray sounded confused.

“don’t care. i hate whitman.”

“but you like van gogh.”

so he’d found the drawing, then. whatever. didn’t matter, he’d seen it in the shop, too, probably. it wasn’t like it was actually mick’s—stolen things were stolen for a reason. they didn’t belong to you. so—

—wait.

“says who?”

“oh, uh. no one? i just thought…”

“thought wrong,” mick said. “go away.”

ray didn’t respond, and for a moment mick thought he’d listened—but then the door opened with a rush and a whine and mick snapped upright so quick he thought his spine might’ve snapped.

“i said,” mick said, through the headrush and the sudden ringing in his ears, “go away.”

“i’m just leaving the book,” ray said, and held it out to him.

mick made to grab it. missed. arms too slow, even if his eyes were tracking right. which they weren’t. because it was bright again. light from the hallway, half-blinding him, making his eyes sting and water and little color patches appear in his vision when he blinked away.

he tried again, successfully this time. chucked the book across the room. “great. now get out.”

“...you okay?”

“out.”

ray held up his hands in surrender, left. mick couldn’t be bothered to tell if the gesture’d been mocking or not. all that mattered was ray was gone, and the room was dead quiet and dark once again.

he fumbled on the blankets for a couple pills, chewed them to avoid the hassle of swallowing, drank what was left of his water, which wasn’t much, and then laid back down. waited for the pills to take effect.

slowly, after hell only knew how long, they did. the spiking pain slid back to a dull ache, and he lay there for a while, foggy as hell, til his stomach got tight enough and his limbs shaky enough that he got up.

food. he needed food. none left in the room, so kitchen it was. snack of some kind. (thank god for robots who did the job for you—no need to put in any effort, except walking.)

on impulse, he grabbed the little book from where he’d tossed it and tucked it in his pocket. trudged to the kitchen, which—yes, was empty. no one else around, so late at night. probably sleeping.

more for him. (and nevermind the ship had an endless supply of food—of everything. that wasn’t the point.)

he had gideon make cake, because why not.

ate it. pulled out his book when he finished and couldn’t get any more crumbs on it. jammed on his glasses. turned to the page with the drawing and stared at it for a while. then read the poem above it. and the one on the page beside it. and the one after that.

and on and on, scowling at some, frowning at others, but still reading, because it was easier than stopping, and because van gogh had picked it up for a reason, and maybe there’d be other sketches.

unexpectedly, there was—just one. small, barely larger than a thumbnail. the moon.

he looked at it for a moment, then turned back to the page with the flower and the cup. those were better, though he couldn’t’ve said why.

he wondered if snart would’ve agreed. was surprised to find he wasn’t sure.

he flipped through the book slowly. resisted the urge to put his head down—couldn’t sleep out here. others would walk up, would see.

so he stood, not bothering to put his dishes away. tucked the book back in his pocket, wandered the ship. meant to head back to his room, but his feet led him to the library instead, and then it was too much effort to turn back around, so he slipped inside and found a corner and sat down, knees bent, back against the wall.

looked through the book a little more. still didn’t like whitman, but there were one or two turns of phrase he couldn’t deny were nice. one or two he’d be tempted to steal, except then they wouldn’t be his. and he could do better anyway.

would. had. and in fewer goddamned words.

he closed the book. considered getting up. decided against it. the corner was cozy. and while his skull wasn’t being viciously attacked by goblins _at the moment_ , there were no guarantees it wouldn’t get start again if he stood up, especially given how fuzzy it was, and how heavy his eyes were, and how much water he’d forgotten to drink, and—

he stayed.

let his eyes slip shut. drifted.

slept.

-

half-woke, hearing footsteps, and ordinarily he’d be snapped-wake, shoulders straight, zipping to his feet—but the corner was nice, the footsteps soft and familiar, and then silent—and then gone.

so he shrugged mentally, and drifted back to sleep.

-

woke again, still a bit fuzzy, but less stretched.

blinked, and discovered two things. one, he’d been more out of it yesterday than he’d realized, because he was suddenly, almost startlingly clear-headed. and two, he was covered in a blanket.

not his blanket. or a hospital one. or snart’s.

someone else’s. big and thick and soft—softer than any mick owned. and a deep red, like blood. except this blanket looked like it’d never seen blood in its life—again, unlike mick’s.

he held a section up between three fingers, frowning, then dropped it back to his lap. glanced around, found no one was there, and brushed an edge against his face. _really_ soft.

mick considered his options. he could take the blanket back to his room without a word to anyone, and either someone would come yell at him because it belonged to them, or no one would, because it was just a ship thing. or he could leave it here, and there’d be no chance of anyone yelling, except maybe about him not bothering to fold it. or he could fold it up and leave it on the nearest table, and then no one could yell at all.

in the end, he decided, his head didn’t hurt enough anymore for yelling to bother him, but he couldn’t be bothered to carry the giant thing all the way back to his room, so he left it where it was.

wondered, vaguely, who it belonged to. who’d left it there. put it on him, like he was some—big idiot kid.

could’ve been anyone, really. they all thought of him like that, more or less, with a side of murderous bastard.

well. he’d probably find out at breakfast. whoever it was, they wouldn’t be able to resist poking him about it.

-

but no one poked. or jabbed. or insinuated, or snarked, or even grinned and asked, “how’d you sleep?”

a scattered chorus of _hi_ s and _hey_ s, and then they left him to eat, same as always.

he eyed them suspiciously, but said nothing. if they weren’t gonna acknowledge it yet, neither was he.

the day passed aimlessly and no one said anything and he decided, dubiously, that they probably weren’t going to. for whatever reason.

so he let it go. moved on. did laundry to stop himself swirling in suspicion, and because he couldn’t see his floor anymore, so it was probably about time anyway.

gathered everything in his basket, headed for the laundry room—paused in the doorway as ray loaded a large, red blanket into the machine.

stared, for a moment.

turned around and walked back out.

-

so it’d been ray.

figured. bleedin heart and all. probably felt sorry for him.

what didn’t figure was why he hadn’t said anything. man couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life.

unless he just just hadn’t thought it worth mentioning. not that big a deal. which, really, it hadn’t been. if it’d been snart—

mick remembered, abruptly, who’d dumped all the blankets on top of him, that time he’d decided shivering for four days straight was better than taking orders. ( _you looked cold_ , snart’d said, after dropping the pile directly on top of him.) who’d kept water at the bedside table, drawn the blinds, closed the door.

who’d done similar things, other times—thrown jackets at him. first aid kits. apples—the sweet kind, not the sour ones. who’d done them all the time, sometimes casually, sometimes pointedly, as the mood struck him.

and he’d done the same. more or less, anyway. just not as openly. pills in the coffee, quieter footsteps, oh stupid me i made too much dinner again, help me finish it will ya.

easily, like clockwork.

so if it’d been snart, in the stupid library with the stupid blanket—

but it hadn’t been.

-

mick chucked the whitman book at the wall.

-

went out on the next mission and fried more goons and got absolutely clobbered in the back of the head cause he’d been more focused getting the target than watching his six.

but he  _had_ gotten the target, so.

-

back in the waverider. dinner. then a beer. and another. and another.

then back in his room.

that stupid book sitting where it’d fallen, on top of a pile of junk.

he left. got another beer. went to the library. read.

fell asleep, entirely without meaning to, bent over a book he’d barely skimmed.

woke up cold, went back to bed.

-

the next time mick went to the library late at night, he brought his own blanket. fell asleep wrapped in it, nodding over a well-worn copy of _dracula_.

woke to find a second blanket piled over him anyway. not red this time. instead, a deep blue, which smelled distinctly of old man aftershave.

the professor, then.

mick didn’t mean to confront him over it—but it was so stupid, he’d already had a blanket, had taken precautions so no one could step in, and _still_ , for no reason at all—

so he ended up giving stein some kind of look. angry one, probably. not that he actually was angry—though maybe he was, a bit—but that was just how he always looked. especially to stein. (he swore, some days, stein really thought mick might kill him. still. after all this time, everything he’d done for—)

but this time stein didn’t answer in a rush, didn’t hold his hands up by his ears and tremble. he just shrugged.

“you looked cold.”

-

mick mulled things over. picked up the book, leafed through it again.

-

snart would’ve liked all three sketches, but preferred the flower. and he would’ve found it _hilarious_ that mick called van gogh _vince._  might’ve called him that too—that or _vincent_. and he definitely would’ve fought mick for the book—and he would’ve won.

(mick would’ve let him. there would’ve been no _point_ in taking the book, if snart had been there, except to give it to him.)

-

weeks later, mick ran across ray slumped in front of bright neon and faintly-bubbling beakers in the middle of the night, and checked if he was dead.

nope.

he moved the beakers to another table, turned out the lights, and left.

he wasn’t gonna tuck the bastard in, but that’d been a recipe for disaster and he wasn’t about to let him _die_ either.

-

scant days afterward, he ran into stein asleep over a textbook, and rolled his eyes. honestly, him and ray, they were—what was the word. para-something. he tapped his fingers against the side of his leg rapidly.

 _...parodies_ , his brain supplied, finally.

that was it. they were parodies of themselves.

mick half-rolled his eyes again and replaced the textbook with the man’s own grandpa sweatshirt, then turned out the lights and left.

-

that, he decided, made them even.

-

(if he moved another set of beakers away from ray a couple weeks later, if he threw a nearby and very ugly afghan over nate, if he turned out the light above jax’s workspace and kicked the wrenches away, if he paced loudly and cursed in the hallway when he heard muttering from behind the captain’s door at what passed for three in the morning in the temporal zone, if he kept doing so ever-louder til the muttering stopped before stomping away, if he tossed a lab coat at stein, if he turned the lights off in the kitchen when he found amaya snoring at the table, if all these things happened more than once in varying ways at varying times—well. so what. it wasn’t like it mattered.)

(they just looked tired.)

 


End file.
